And god appears to deal a different hand to different tiers --
Tyki stood at the chasm's edge, flicking away what was left of his lit cigarette and watching the dying glow leave a smoky trail down, down, down to a rocky end.
If there even was an end. He'd kicked a rock inside and never heard it land; he'd sent a butterfly, and it had reached the end of its invisible tether before it could find the bottom.
He wondered if the remains of the Akuma he'd sent plummeting down the chasm had ever hit bottom, either.
This was a section of the Dressing Room he'd never seen before; he'd only come across it while rooting out Akuma. It was expansive -- a slice of wilderness cut away and set in a room so large as to be almost like the outdoors itself, but still too enclosed to be one of the more massive courtyards. The ceiling was too high to properly see, the ground and far walls rising into darkness, and Tyki couldn't trace the source of the glow that lit his level of the room. Ruined stone walls jutted out of what looked like rocky mountainsides, with natural rocks and rubble mixing almost indistinguishably. There were a few other signs of civilization -- a corroded sign, and damaged window frame, a rotting carriage wheel -- but all signs pointed to this place having been swallowed up by time and whatever passed for nature here long ago. It would have been hard for anyone to tell what damage had been done by the recent battle and what had been there before.
The room's most notable feature was the huge chasm, the pitch-black pit that split apart the dip between two hills and continued of toward flatter land. Tyki still stood at the edge. It gaped open like a hungry, patient beast, swallowing everything inside.
Tyki stretched and put his hands in his pockets, idly nudging another stone into the waiting maw. It clicked and clacked against the first ledges jutting out, rolled off, and then there was silence.
Well, there wasn't any rush.
Since bungling a spell more than a month ago, Tyki had mostly kept to himself (and away from strange books), exploring and training as he went. He fought whatever Akuma he found, but it wasn't the same kind of desperate escape that had once led to his death.
He was... better. He wasn't "better" the way he wished -- "better," the way he was before -- but he was starting to think he'd never quite manage to get there again. In a strange way, he was getting used to the idea. It was another scar alongside the physical ones; if he could get used to those, he could find ways to work around this.
He still had nightmares. More, in fact, as of late. He still woke up drenched in sweat, sometimes frozen and sometimes lashing out at enemies a world away. He still couldn't breathe when the wrong thoughts were too close. Wounds that weren't there anymore continued to ache dully. There were still times when everything was falling apart, when he swore he could see and smell and feel everything from that time and wonder if he wasn't really there.
Even so...
Even so, he felt lighter. It was the difference between laboring under the weight of what had happened and being crushed by it all. It was an almost buoyant feeling. If starting to stake his claim on his own life was like waking up from a long dream, this was remembering himself, for all the good and bad it entailed. It was a deep breath after an airless room.
This life -- it still wasn't his. Not the way it should be. But it was possible to make it more of his own again, and the only thing in doubt was whether he would manage it or not.
He didn't want room in himself for those sorts of doubts anymore.
Tyki cocked his head, listening, but there was still no sound from the last rock to disappear from sight. Taking a breath, he stepped off the chasm's edge.
The air was as solid as stone beneath his feet. He took another step, then another, then another, and soon he was dashing lengthwise over the chasm in a test of just how far he could take himself in a single try.
After all, what was there to stop him but himself?